


You Deserved Better

by TintedPink



Series: Afterlife (Working Title) [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, the tags are spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 12:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18638203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TintedPink/pseuds/TintedPink
Summary: Summary is a spoiler. See beginning notes for details.





	You Deserved Better

**Author's Note:**

> Additional tags for: soul world, afterlife, Platonic IronWidow, Possibly DrPepperony Endgame, character exploration, the author is fixing things within canon (probably), in this house we write Howard Stark a redemption arc because Tony Stark Deserves A Better Father, Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting Get’s Resolved, Maria Stark is a voice of reason, but also a former victim
> 
> Summary: Tony and Natasha meet up in the soul world. They get the endings they deserve.

Tony wakes up floating in a pool of water. He can see the surface above him, and the empty orange tinted liquid around him, but he can’t make out any real details.

 

He surfaces and Natasha is standing not five feet from him, one of her half smiles on her face and hand outstretched. She’s standing on water that she should be floating in.

 

“Hi, Tony.”

 

He can barely believe he’s looking at her, and suddenly it all comes back to him. She’s dead. He’s dead. They’re dead.

 

“Natasha, what? What’s happening?” He reaches out his hand, his right hand, and he stops it in midair, his gaze caught on unmarred skin, bared only to the wrist before dissapearing under a black jacket. The one he’d been wearing while he was running with Pepper five years ago.

 

“We won.” She smiles, one of her genuine smiles, and she reaches the rest of the way down to take his hand. “Come on. There’s a lot to see here and the view down there isn’t great.” She pulls him to his feet and he goes, too dazed to do anything else.

 

Tony walks at her side, uncomprehending of the impossibility of walking on water he’d been floating beneath the surface of just moments before.

 

“You’re dead.” He says, again, still not processing what he was seeing as they walked through what felt like an endless pool of... water? He was dead. Did dead people need water? Did they get wet? Now that he was thinking about it, Tony sure didn’t feel wet. And he’d just been floating in whatever liquid this was. So not water. Maybe some kind of superfluid??

 

“Hey, tin head, stop overthinking it. There’s plenty of time to figure out the afterlife later. Focus on getting where we need to go, or we’ll never get there.” Natasha nudges him with her free hand. They’re still holding hands. Weird.

 

Okay, not that weird. But Natasha had never really come across as the touchy type. Huh. Maybe it wasn’t Natasha?

 

She nudges him again and he pulls himself out of his thoughts. “How can I focus on ‘getting where we need to go’ if I don’t know where we’re going?”

 

“Easy, just do it.” Her grin was nearly saccharine and he pulled a face at her that made her laugh. He could count the number of times he’d heard her laugh on one hand.

 

“Just do it, huh?” He quirks his mouth and looks around him at the nothingness that stretches into forever. “Alright then. Let’s get where we need to go.”

 

“That’s more like it.” She says and in the next few steps he can see... a building?

 

“What’s that.”

 

“Where we’re going.”

 

————

 

“So, you’ve just been watching us this entire time?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“So, you know we won?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“And that’s how you knew to come and get me from... there?”

 

“Yup.” Her smile is... soft and genuine, and it comforts Tony to see that she’s content in death, and wasn’t that a weird thing to think about?

 

“So, who went and got you?”

 

Natasha looks down at the polished granite counter she’s leaning her elbows on. They’re sitting in a kitchen that’s empty, but reminds him a lot of the one from the common floor of the tower. It’s like looking back at a simpler time, and just being allowed to be happy, live in the memory of it.

 

Natasha’s fingers are intertwining and unraveling again, over and over, like she’s looking for the right words to say. It’s a tell he’s never seen her have before. He guesses there’s not much need to hide when you’re dead.

 

“I didn’t know who they were. Not at first. But then I just knew...” Her eyes were shining when she looked back up, but there were no tears coming. “It was my parents.” She looked away, her half smile near bitter. “It was the first time I’d ever met them.”

 

“Where are they?” He asks, but she just shakes her head.

 

“They’re wherever they are.” She looks up at him through her eyelashes, smile still half bitter. “It’s all kinds of complicated. I haven’t been here long enough to really understand, not the way that some souls do, just... long enough to guide you here.”

 

“What’s here?” He looks at her and then around the room. It isn’t a replica of the kitchen they’d had in the common area that had so rarely been shared between Roger’s stints in DC, and Clint and Natasha working with SHIELD, and Thor on Asgard. More often than not it was just Tony and Bruce in the tower and even then, Tony spent a lot of time in Malibu and Bruce preferred the solitude of his own floor.

 

But the few times they’d all been there had been really really nice.

 

“This is your afterlife, for now. It’s the place where you were the happiest, with the person you were happiest with, the dead one anyway.” Her eyes flickered with mirth and Tony smiled back at her.

 

“Should I be flattered? That feels like a compliment.”

 

“You grew on me.” She sat up and tapped the sink to get it to start running. The basin filled with water without anyone having to plug it up and Tony looked at her with curiosity and quiet bewilderment in his eyes. “Patience.” She said, as the basin filled and the water stopped. “Your friend Doctor Strange taught me how to do this, for the few minutes he was here before they all went back.“ She poked the very tip of her index finger into the water and the water rippled and then became like a screen, showing him a high definition image of Stephen Strange talking to Natasha. “You’re going to want to hear this.”

 

“Tony,” the water-Stephen said, and he snapped his head back up at Natasha.

 

“It’s my memory, just watch it.” She reached out and turned his head back towards the water with her thumb and forefinger.

 

“Tony, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. There was no other way. There was no conceivable way that we could’ve won the war without you. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain.” The usually stoic doctor had tears forming in his eyes. “You have my word. I’m going to show Natasha how to look back at the living. It’s complicated, and it will take a lot of practice for both of you, but... with enough time, you should be able to see your family again, until they come here.” His smile was sad, but trying really hard not to be, “That won’t be for a very long time, though. I hope this can be a consolation. I-” Stephen looked away and cleared his throat. “Choosing this reality was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. Choosing to sacrifice one life that wasn’t my own for the fate of the universe, one innocent life...” He blinks away tears and Tony starts to cry. He barely knew Strange, but the compassion he had seemed boundless. “I thought it would be an easy choice, logically speaking, but I watched you die for the universe in so many different realities...” Stephen stopped and cleared his throat again. Did ghosts cry? Because Stephen was teary eyed, but not actually crying. “You deserved better. You deserved to be with your family. I’m sorry there was nothing I could do to keep you here with them. I’m sorry you couldn’t have that.”

 

“I did have that,” Tony says to an unresponsive memory. “I had five years with Morgan, with Pepper. It was more than I ever thought I’d get.” He felt the teariness he was starting to suspect would never actually lead to tears well up in his eyes and the image disappeared. He blinked and looked back up at Natasha. “I did have that.”

 

“I know,” she smiles and pats his hand. The water drains away without anyone doing anything to make it. “Come on. There’s plenty to see, and some people who will probably want to see you.”

 

“People? Who-?”

 

“Hi, Howard Potts,” A chuckling voice said from somewhere to his right.

 

“Little Bambino,” another voice said adoringly, this one feminine, and Tony froze and looked at Nat for conformation that he wasn’t just dreaming. What if he was just in BARF, and he wasn’t-.

 

She smiled reassuringly and nodded to the spot where the voices were coming from. He took a deep breath and trusted her.

 

He turned around bodily to face the new comers. “Mom? Dad?”


End file.
